The politics of nothingness has engulfed the UK

Beliefs, actions and solid achievements have been replaced by feelings, vibes, and political cross-dressing

Another day at the Westminster gossip mill – the place that makes an all-girls sixth form look like the model of taciturn discretion. Three Red Wall MPS are said to be in defection talks with Labour, reportedly unhappy with the “ideological direction” of the Conservative Party.

These rumours should be taken with an industrial silo worth of salt. Labour HQ successfully buried news of the last defection until the last minute, and it would be in its interests to do so again. When Red Wall MP Christian Wakeford jumped ship back in January, it came as a shock to Westminster, and triggered a moment of bonafide high drama when the Member for Bury South, blushing crimson behind his Union Jack facemask, took his Commons seat amid wild cheers on the Labour benches.

Afterwards, Wakeford received such a backlash from his former Tory colleagues that it momentarily united a Conservative Party in the throes of crisis and shored up the PM’S position.

This alone might be enough to deter other waverers from following suit.

But it is telling that the possibility of further defections feels eminently plausible, given the state of politics at the moment, and the way the boundaries between the two parties have blurred. Crossing the floor ought to be the most consequential decision of a politician’s career. It shouldn’t be easy to flit from one party to another, to go to bed a committed conservative and rise a convinced socialist or social democrat the following day.

Yet today’s Tory MPS, particularly the more recent arrivals, show little of their predecessors’ ideology or interest in policy. You are more likely to find them opining about some local constituency project or spending scheme than, say, macroeconomics – and not entirely irrationally.

The 24-hour news cycle and the stultifying incentives of social media have left many broadcasters and pundits with squirrel-like attention spans. Since new policy announcements often sink without trace after a 10-minute outing on the Today programme, there are fewer incentives for MPS to think deeply about anything. No 10’s boundless capacity for U-turns also gives them little reason to commit to anything.

But the trend goes beyond policy, too. Britain is being overwhelmed by political shallowness of a different kind. Increasingly, signalling – the general vibe politicians exude – seems to trump real-world actions or behaviour. A growing number of MPS have somehow acquired reputations for representing positions that are the complete opposite of what they actually believe.

Remember Cameron-era Jeremy Hunt? As health secretary he was the Left’s favourite bogey man, portrayed as the cruel face of Toryism and scourge of junior doctors. But even during the 2019 Tory leadership election, Hunt was arguing that Britain should emulate Donald Trump’s tax cuts, and has made no secret of his personal belief that the abortion limit should be reduced from 24 weeks to 12. Yet nowadays Hunt is depicted as on the “soft-left” of the Tory Party, as Red Wall MP Scott Benton recently pigeonholed him.

Consider Sir John Major’s transformation in the minds of ardent Remainers – from a middle-of-the-road Thatcherite who was capable of inept or thoughtless behaviour into a sainted elder statesman. Such is the power of “politics-by-vibe” that many would be surprised to learn that “Tory wet” Tom Tugendhat voted against the Government’s recent National Insurance hike. Much has been made of Sir Keir Starmer’s ideological rootlessness, but Labour’s top brass suffers similar problems – it would be hard to say what Yvette Cooper stands for beyond a kneejerk sense of “Tories bad”.

Clearly much of this is due to the political realignment, hastened by Brexit, which has cut across the usual party divides and bred complacency. If economics is no longer Britain’s great aligning issue, some might say, then why bother with it? Why should MPS care either, if all they must do to burnish their “conservative” credentials is say they backed leaving the EU? For a time, paying lip service to free-market capitalism might have seemed like enough, but recent events should have disabused Tories of that notion.

But this trend owes perhaps more to Boris Johnson himself. Our PM has perfected the art of saying one thing while doing another (or nothing). His big ticket policy speeches lurch from one platitude to another, in hyperactive language that sits in total contrast to the paralysis in No10 – think “turbocharging”, putting “rocket-boosters under the economy”, championing tax cuts while raising them in practice. Yet in measurable ways, Johnson has moved his party closer to socialism than any Prime Minister since the prethatcher days. He who promised to be a freedom-loving conservative has governed as an illiberal technocrat.

Before taking his seat on that fateful day in January, Wakeford was, for an instant, briefly suspended between two sides of the House – neither Tory nor Labour, MP for Bury South, Honourable Member for nowhere. Looking back on it now, that moment seems an apt metaphor for the nothingness that has engulfed our politics.